


In the Eye of All Beholders

by chucks_prophet



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Art History, Art Museums, College Student Sam, Curator Eileen, F/M, Fluff, Humor, Inspired by Art, Museums, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, paintings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-25
Updated: 2017-01-25
Packaged: 2018-09-19 19:35:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9457550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chucks_prophet/pseuds/chucks_prophet
Summary: Sam's far from intellectually dim with a score of 174 on the LSATs, so it's not like he doesn't get it.To be fair, Sam doesn't get a lot of things: How some people still deny global warming over their daily commute, why it takes someone twenty minutes at a burger drive-thru to place an order, why women still don't have equal pay, why the earth is round, but this is just a matter of overanalyzing on his part.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This idea came to me just randomly, as most of my ideas do, and I love these two so I had to write it.

 

Sam's far from intellectually dim with a score of 174 on the LSATs, so it's not like he doesn't get it.

To be fair, Sam doesn't get a _lot_ of things: How some people still deny global warming over their daily commute, why it takes someone twenty minutes at a burger drive-thru to place an order, why women still don't have equal pay, why the earth is round, but _this_ is just a matter of overanalyzing on his part.   
  
Art—specifically canvas art. It's pretty nice to look at. His Art History class has at least provided him with a deeper appreciation for it, but Sam, the paleontology student he is, can't help but notice the technical aspect of the artworks within the museum he's touring—the less philosophical and more textual observations that raise the most pressing questions: What medium creates enough pressure on the canvas to make the ripples in the water stand out like they do? How it did the artist, geometrically-speaking, paint perfect circles? What angle did they have to draw from to get that vantage point?  
  
"You're doing it wrong."  
  
Sam swivels his head to find a woman a little older than him. She's pretty, her makeup light, her face accentuated by the bright red lipstick that looks blanch in comparison to her cheeks. She's wearing a short-sleeve black dress that touches her knees, and heels that look just tall enough to click three times. "Excuse me?" he asks, not sure how to appropriately respond.  
  
"Your thinking is so loud I can hear it from the other side of the room—and I'm deaf." Sam shifts a little in his stance. The woman lends out her hand with the utmost professionalism, "Eileen. I'm the head curator."  
  
"Wow... this is embarrassing.”  
  
Eileen smiles. "You're not an art major, I take it?"  
  
"Nah, I'm sorry," Sam laughs, rubbing his neck as he pulls his hand away.  
  
"No need to be. A majority of our visitors come from the Art History courses at the local colleges.”

 Sam breathes a disbelieving sigh, "Wow."  
  
"What?" Eileen asks.  
  
"Nothing, it's just that's actually kind of sad." He turns his head so she can see his lips better as he goes onto say, "You know, that people don't willingly come here. These artists must devote so much of their time to their craft. Michelangelo spent over two years to sculpt David, and Monet dedicated his final thirty years of life to 250 oil-based paintings on lily pads. You'd think people would show a little more respect."  
  
"What's your major?"  
  
"Paleontology, why do you ask?"  
  
Eileen nods. "It definitely shows. See, you may not dig art, but history is your strong suit. That, and science—would you agree art can be a science too? I saw the way you were oogling these canvases earlier, like they were calculus on steroids."  
  
"What're you saying?"  
  
"Just that that deeper meaning you're looking for isn't going to come by thinking—it comes by feeling. Let that feeling come to you." She pauses. "Art doesn't need to be physically heard to be understood."

Sam’s eyebrows form a landslide before he lifts them, bathing in realization like a shower of rain that comes briefly but bathes the parched sidewalk. “Wow, that’s actually…” He tucks his notebook and binder closer to his chest as he smiles shyly at Eileen, who’s smiling as well. “Um, that’s really… enlightening, I guess.” ‘ _I guess.’ You’re Sam friggin’ Winchester, ranked in Honor Roll all eight semesters of high school and won silver at Nationals for your Forensics team and your definite answer is ‘I guess’?!_

Eileen is somehow still smiling, perhaps even broader than before. She really is pretty. He wonders what her hair would look like out of the bun perched high and tight on her head. Maybe Sam needs to do that with his hair—he’ll do pretty much anything at the moment if it helps keep his thoughts from running amuck.

“English isn’t my forte,” Sam continues, just rambling now, “I once wrote about the Biological, Social, and Behavioral findings of a single child versus a child from a family of one or more siblings, and got a C on it because I was supposed to write an _informative_ paper. How am I not being informing when I say that my older brother is an entitled, loquacious dick? I’d die for the guy, but Jesus, there’s only so much I can take hearing about cars and lore and mythology—you’d think he’s _X-Files_ , driving around, living the supernatural.”

“That.”

“What?”

“The way you described your brother, describe this painting.” Eileen points to the portrait in front of them. Sam recognizes it from his textbook as van Gogh’s “Starry Night Over the Rhône”. “Except…” She stops to laugh, “you know, less entitled, less dick.”

Sam blushes as he turns his head, but Eileen is nodding hers, encouraging him to go on.

“Umm…” Sam pauses, drinking in what van Gogh probably drank as he was painting it. He sees the ripples in the water like before, but he also sees the yellowish light like sea trees, wider closer to the bay, a washed-over little shore, and thin out as it advances towards the distant, floodlit houses.

The stars in the sky look like tree toppers, shining bright and naturally round in shape, and in a way, it reminds him of Christmas. Not because of the tree-like illumination the moonlight casts on the water or the tree-topper stars, but simply because of the feeling it gives him. “It’s calming,” he decides, eyes like the remains of various paints in a water jug never leaving the page, “you get a sense of ease looking at it. Even with the people walking along the shore. They could take one of those boats over there and explore, but they’re content to just walk the length of the river… like being in each other’s presence is enough.”

There’s a sense of loneliness about it too, from our perspective. They don’t see the village ahead, or the vastness of the water or the sky, the empty boats—they’re only seeing each other, so _they’re_ not alone. That’s the other thing that’s calming about it: They basically have a universe within the other that _we_ can’t see.”

Sam shakes his head, laughing, as he turns to Eileen again, “But who knows, I’m just a science major, right?”

Eileen just smiles.


End file.
